Caleb West, Master Diver Part 22

"Ye can't give me a cent, Caleb. I knowed her 'fore you did," said the captain, protesting with his hand upraised, a slightly indignant tone in his voice. Then a thought crept into his mind. "Come in and give it to her yerself, Caleb," putting his arm through the diver's.

"No," said Caleb slowly, "I ain't come here for that, and I don't want ye to make no mistake, cap'n. I come here 'cause I been a-thinkin' it over, and somehow it seems to me that half o' this is hern. I don't want ye to tell 'er that I _give_ it to her, 'cause it ain't so.

I jes' want ye to lay it som'eres she'll find it; and when she asks about it, say it's hern."

Captain Joe crumpled the bills in his hand.

"Caleb," he said, "I ain't goin' to say nothin' more to ye. I've said all I could, and las' time I said too much; but what seems to me to be the cussedest foolishness out is for ye to go back an' git yer supper by yerself, when the best little gal you or I know is a-settin' within ten feet o' ye with her heart breakin' to git to ye."

"I'm sorry she's sufferin', Cap'n Joe. I don't like to see n.o.body suffer, leastways Betty, but ye don't know it all. Jes' leave them bills as I asked ye. Tell Aunty Bell I got the pie she sent me when I come home,-I'll eat it to-morrow. I s'pose ye ain't got no new orders 'bout that last row of enrockment? I set the bottom stone to-day, an'

I ought'er get the last of 'em finished nex' week. The tide cut turrible to-day, an' my air comin' so slow through the pump threw me 'mong the rocks an' seaweed, an' I got a sc.r.a.pe on my hand," showing a deep cut on its back; "but it's done hurtin' now. Good-night."

On his way home, just before he reached his cabin, Caleb came upon Bert Simmons, the sh.o.r.e road letter-carrier, standing in the road, under one of the village street lamps, overhauling his package of letters.

"About these letters that's comin' for yer wife, Caleb? Shall I leave 'em with you or take 'em down to Cap'n Joe Bell's? I give the others to her. Here's one now."

Caleb took the letter mechanically, looked it over slowly, noted its Stonington postmark, and, handing it back, answered calmly, "Better leave 'em down to Cap'n Joe's, Bert."

CHAPTER XV

A NARROW PATH

When Sanford, after dining, rang her bell, Mrs. Leroy was seated on the veranda that overlooked the garden,-a wide and inviting veranda, always carpeted in summer with mats and rugs, and made comfortable with cane chairs and straw divans that were softened into luxurious delights by silk cushions. During the day the sunshine filtered its way between the thickly matted vines, lying in patterns on the floor, or was held in check by thin Venetian blinds. At night the light of a huge eight-sided lantern festooned with ta.s.sels shed its glow through screens of colored gauze.

Mrs. Leroy was dressed in a simple gown of white crepe, which clung and wrinkled about her slight figure, leaving her neck and arms bare.

On a low table beside her rested a silver tray with a slender-shaped coffee-pot and tiny egg-sh.e.l.l cups and saucers.

She looked up at him, smiling, as he pushed aside the curtains. "Two lumps, Henry?" she called, holding the sugar-tongs in her hand. Then, as the light of the lantern fell upon his face, she exclaimed, "Why, what's the matter? You are worried: is there fresh trouble at the Ledge?" and she rose from her chair.

"No; only Carleton," he replied, looking down at her. "He holds on to that certificate, and I can get no money until he gives it up; yet I have raised the concrete six inches to please him. I wired Captain Joe yesterday to see him at once and to get his answer,-yes or no. What do you suppose he replied? 'Tell him he don't own the earth. I'll sign it when I get to it.' Not another word, nor would he give any reason for not signing it."

"Why don't you appeal to the Board? General Barton would not see you suffer an unjust delay. I'll write him myself," she said, sitting bolt upright on the divan.

Sanford smiled. Her rising anger soothed him as flattery might have done at another time. He felt in it a proof of how close to her heart she really held his interests and his happiness.

"That would only prolong the agony, and might lose us the season's work. The Board is always fair and honest, only it takes so long for it to move." As he spoke he piled the cushions high behind her head, and drew a low chair opposite to her. "It's torture to a contractor who is behind time," he continued, flecking the ashes of his cigar into his saucer. "It means getting all tangled up in the red tape of a government bureau. I must give up my holiday and find Carleton; there is nothing else to be done now. I leave on the early train to-morrow.

But what a rest this is!" he exclaimed, breaking into the strained impetuosity of his own tones with a long-drawn sigh of relief, as he looked about the dimly lighted veranda. "Nothing like it anywhere."

As he spoke his eyes wandered over her dainty figure, half reclining before him,-the delicately modeled waist, the shapely wrists, and the tiny slippers peeping beneath the edge of her dress that fell in folds to the floor. "Another new gown, I see?"

"Never mind about my gown. I want to hear more about this man Carleton," she said. Her face was alight with the pleasure of his tribute, but she spoke as though she had hardly heard it. "What have you done to him to make him hate you?"

"Nothing but try to keep him from ruining the work."

"And you told him he was ruining it?"

"Certainly; there was nothing else to do. He's got the concrete now six inches out of level; you can see it plainly at low water."

"No wonder he takes his revenge," she said, cutting straight into the heart of the matter with that marvelous power peculiar to some women.

"What else has gone wrong?" She meant him to tell her everything, knowing that to let him completely unburden his mind would give him the only real rest that he needed. She liked, too, to feel her influence over him. That he always consulted her in such matters was to Kate one of the keenest pleasures that his friendship brought.

"Everything, I sometimes think. We are very much behind. That concrete base should have been finished two weeks ago. The equinoctial gale is nearly due. If we can't get the first two courses of masonry laid by the middle of November, I may have to wait until spring for another payment, and that about means bankruptcy."

"What does Captain Joe think?"

"He says we shall pull through if we have no more setbacks. Dear old Captain Joe! nothing upsets him. We certainly have had our share of them this season: first it was the explosion, and now it is Carleton's spite."

"Suppose you _do_ lose time, Henry, and _do_ have to wait until spring to go on with the work. It will not be for the first time." There was a sympathetic yet hopeful tone in her voice. "When you sunk the coffer-dam at Kingston, three years ago, and it lay all winter in the ice, didn't you worry yourself half sick? And yet it all came out right. Oh, you needn't raise your eyebrows; I saw it myself.

You know you are better equipped now, both in experience and in means, than you were then. Make some allowance for your own temperament, and please don't forget the nights you have lain awake worrying over nothing. It will all come out right." She leaned toward him and laid her hand on his, as an elder sister might have done, and in a gayer tone added, "I'm going to Medford soon, myself, and I'll invite this dreadful Mr. Carleton to come over to luncheon, and you'll get your certificate next day. What does he look like?"

Sanford broke into a laugh. "You wouldn't touch him with a pair of tongs, and I wouldn't let you,-even with them."

"Then I'll do it, anyway, just to show you how clever I am," she retorted, with a pretty, bridling toss of her head. She had taken her hand away. Sanford still held his own extended.

Kate's tact was having its effect. Under the magic of her sympathy his cares had folded their tents. Carleton was fast becoming a dim speck on the horizon, and his successive troubles were but a string of camels edging the blue distance of his thoughts.

It was always like this. She never failed to comfort and inspire him.

Whenever his anxieties became unbearable it was to Kate that he turned, as he had done to-night. The very touch of her soft hand, so white and delicate, laid upon his arm, and the exquisite play of melody in her voice, soothed and strengthened him. Things were never half so bad as they seemed, when he could see her look at him mischievously from under her lowered eyelids as she said, "Mercy, Henry! is that all? I thought the whole lighthouse had been washed away." And he never missed the inspiration of the change that followed,-the sudden quiet of her face, the very tensity of her figure, as she added in earnest tones, instinct with courage and sympathy, some word of hopeful interest that she of all women best knew how to give.

With the anxieties dispelled which had brought him hurrying to-night to Gramercy Park, they both relapsed into silence,-a silence such as was common to their friendship, one which was born neither of ennui nor of discontent, the boredom of friends nor the poverty of meagre minds, but that restful silence which comes only to two minds and hearts in entire accord, without the necessity of a single spoken word to lead their thoughts; a close, noiseless fitting together of two temperaments, with all the rough surfaces of their natures worn smooth by long a.s.sociation each with the other. In such accord is found the strongest proof of true and perfect friendship. It is only when this estate no longer satisfies, and one or both crave the human touch, that the danger-line is crossed. When stealthy fingers set the currents of both hearts free, and the touch becomes electric, discredited friendship escapes by the window, and triumphant love enters by the door.

The lantern shed its rays over Kate's white draperies, warming them with a pink glow. The smoke of Sanford's cigar curled upward in the still air and drifted out into the garden, or was lost in the vines of the jessamine trailing about the porch. Now and then the stillness was broken by some irrelevant remark suggested by the perfume of the flowers, the quiet of the night, the memory of Jack's and Helen's happiness; but silence always fell again, except for an occasional light tattoo of Kate's dainty slipper on the floor. A restful la.s.situde, the reaction from the constant hourly strain of his work, came over Sanford; the world of perplexity seemed shut away, and he was happier than he had been in weeks. Suddenly and without preliminary question, Mrs. Leroy asked sharply, with a strange, quivering break in her voice, "What about that poor girl Betty? Has she patched it up yet with Caleb? She told me, the night she stayed with me, that she loved him dearly. Poor girl! she has nothing but misery ahead of her if she doesn't." She spoke with a certain tone in her voice that showed but too plainly the new mood that had taken possession of her.

"Pity she didn't find it out before she left him!" exclaimed Sanford.

"Pity he didn't do something to show his appreciation of her, you mean!" she interrupted, with a quick toss of her head.

"You are all wrong, Kate. Caleb is the gentlest and kindest of men.

You don't know that old diver, or you wouldn't judge him harshly."

"Oh, he didn't beat her, I suppose. He only left her to get along by herself. I wish such men would take it out in beating. Some women could stand that better. It's the cold indifference that kills." She had risen from her seat, and was pacing the floor of the veranda.

"Well, that was not his fault, Kate. While the working season lasts he must be on the Ledge. He couldn't come in every night."

"That's what they all say! If it's not one excuse, it's another. I'm tired to death of hearing about men who would rather make money than make homes. Now that he has driven her out of her wits by his brutality, he closes his door against her, even when she crawls back on her knees. But don't _you_ despise her." She stood before him, looking down into his face for a moment. "Be just as sweet and gentle to her as you can. If she ever goes wrong again, it will be the world's fault or her husband's,-not her own. Tell her from me that I trust her and believe in her, and that I send her my love."

Sanford listened to her with ill-concealed admiration. It was when she was defending or helping some one that she appealed to him most. At those times he recognized that her own wrongs had not imbittered her, but had only made her the more considerate.

"There's never a day you don't teach me something," he answered quietly, his eyes fixed on her moving figure. "Perhaps I have been a little hard on Betty, but it's because I've seen how Caleb suffers."

She stopped again in her walk and leaned over the rail of the veranda, her chin on her hand. Sanford watched her, following the bend of her exquisite head and the marvelous slope of her shoulders. He saw that something unusual had stirred her, but he could not decide whether it was caused by the thought of Betty's misery or by some fresh sorrow of her own. He threw away his cigar, rose from his chair, and joined her at the railing. He could be unhappy himself and stand up under it, but he could not bear to see a shade cross Kate's face.

"You are not happy to-night," he said.

She did not answer.